Re: Wvdial and non-root access

["Cory Snavely" <csnavely@umich.edu>]

> > Only root is able to use wvdial, even though I thought wvdial has been
set
> > up for use by non-root users.
>
> was wvdial set up for this by yourself, or by the wvdial install program?
>
> > When I, as user david, type wvdial, I get an error that david cannot
have
> > access to /dev/ttyS1. That's better than before, when david couldn't
access
> > the wvdial.conf file.
>
> My solution to this is to restrict the access to the wvdial executable and
> make it suid.  This isn't technically the safest way of doing it but I'd
> rather have a simple solution I can keep track of, rather than a
> complicated solution that I can't.
>
> I also have a suid wrapper to 'kill <pidofwvdial' available so that any
> user in the appropriate groups can take the modem offline no matter who
> put it online.

I just set up ppp on my slink workstation yesterday, and I used sudo to
avoid setting scripts suid (although pppd installs as suid root). Even
though I'm using pon/poff, I'll bet sudo can solve your problem, too, if
suid scripts give you "the feeling".

I never used sudo before, but I found it intuitive and flexible and IMHO it
would be easier to maintain than keeping track of suid scripts.